The health sector in the D. R. Congo
Current situation of health services in the country
The hospitals and health centres, most of which were set up in colonial times, are mostly in a poor state of maintenance and hygiene. Only 28 per cent of the population has access to them, for minimum quality care and over the total population. This situation makes access to health care difficult and results in alarming mortality rates:
- For every 100,000 children born alive, 693 mothers die in childbirth (25 in Chile, 21 in the USA, 8 in France, 6 in Spain and 4 in Italy).
- Likewise, out of every 100,000 live births, 7.100 die in the days after delivery (690 in Chile, 590 in the united states and 330 in Spain, France, Italy). In addition, we have to take into account the living conditions of the population.
In this development scenario, a state of health is created in the population that hinders a decent quality of life. This scenario is much less comparable to that of developed countries. In addition, we have to take into account the existence in the environment of tropical diseases for which there are no preventive vaccines and in some cases no treatment. From the Friends of Monkole Foundation we have set up several projects to achieve these drastic figures experienced by health care in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Diseases in the Democratic Republic of Congo:
Tropical diseases and infectious are another point of deterioration of the health of the population and one of the main causes of deaths. Access to treatments is very difficult, and in many locations, nonexistent. This means that health care in the DRC is under severe pressure.
Malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito, causes in Democratic Republic of the Congo more than 78,000 deaths a year. The population infected by the AIDS virus (HIV)is more than 440,000 inhabitants, and this fact causes more than 24,000 deaths per year, of which 25% are children under the age of 5 years.
Other infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, bloody diarrhoea, dengue fever, cholera, sleeping sickness or yellow fever. These diseases cause deterioration and death in the population due to the inability to obtain treatment in an appropriate health centre